These companies are insufferable.

Man, before “AI” became a marketing gimmick,

Samsung Note devices allowed you to use the S-pen to circle text and extract it.

I remember using this feature at least a decade ago!

Gemini: “I can’t help you! I only work here!”

Family sized, if your a single parent with no kids 😂

I wonder how much of that ‘education’ is from ads and influencers constantly pushing VPNs. LOL

I wonder if people know why they are downloading and using a VPN. Especially when you’re talking about the more sketchy ones.

Kind of frustrating that Seagate is the only company to have multiple drives with ZERO failures, but then that 12TB model with over 12% failure… ouch.

That said, I’ve been on Team Seagate IronWolf for years without issues.

My local online newspaper constantly has articles (sponsored articles) about casinos and gambling.

The enshittification of news really accelerated over the last several years.

My idrive plan went from just over $100 to $250.

I created another account, paid for another year at a promotional price, and then deleted my old account.

I will eventually have to come up with a more sustainable cloud/off site backup now that i need more than just a few TB.

Since this is really my “last resort” backup, I’m not too concerned, as anything that would require me to actually restore from this backup set would likely be catastrophic in a life-ending way.

What would be the point of AI replacing people to create art?

The essence of art is that it came from the mind and talent (or skill) from another human being. It’s a thread connecting our humanity through time and space.

No one will be looking back at AI art the same way we look back hundreds or thousands of years at paintings, sculptures, musical compositions, or even real photographs.

We might enjoy some AI generated content for the novelty, but it’s soulless.

Unless that company is operating at a loss, ads in things you pay for are there to further make excess profits.

It’s unethical at best.

We adopted a yellow-headed amazon (parrot) in his 40s. For months he was shy and kept to himself.

One day, seemingly out of the blue, he began whistling songs, cat-calling, saying his name, asking for a cracker, etc. He had like an entire repertoire!

Most unexpected, funniest thing that’s happened with any of our pets.

Close second is a cat that would play fetch, like a dog!

I had quite a few services with them, and ditched them all. They’ve been giving me plenty of incentive to ditch this one last account, so that’ll be on my 2025 todo list!

In the “Manage Preferences” screen, I only get one option “Targeting”, which is already disabled.

This message will come up EVERY TIME I open the app, unless I enable the targeting toggle. Doing so means that my “browsing activity on our apps and websites will be collected by us and by third party companies that we select… This information may also be used to build a profile of your interests, to personalize your content and present you with relevant offers, including on third party sites.”

They literally force me to be annoyed now, or later when my “profile” becomes weaponized against me.

Do all those things, but do a really terrible job. If he wants it done better, he can do them himself!

If and when you can leave, RUN and don’t look back. I’m sorry that you have to live with such an asshole.

FressRSS gave me a UI I was looking for on both mobile and desktop, and it “just works”.

My only complaint, and I’m sure this isn’t a feature found anywhere, is that I wish you could actually delete an article, not just “archive it”. Some of the stuff that gets through on RSS is unfiltered NSFW crap, and I really would rather not have that on my home server!

The funny thing is, I’m nearly certain that it’s opt-in for their benefit (i.e. legal reasons) and not because it benefits the content creator, because it really doesn’t benefit the content creator at all! “Here’s my work. Do what you like with it, and don’t worry about paying.”.

And if you’re a content creator, you can opt in to allow your content to be used by AI… Without compensation. 🤡

As long as you can run the adguard browser extension in a mobile browser, then you can add new elements to block.

But if that’s not an option, you can create those rules on a desktop browser, then add them to Adguard on mobile (the app, not the browser extension).

As long as you have the rules in a filter list, it’ll work anywhere. These amazon specific sanitation rules may already be available on public adblocking lists, and in that case, they could work regardless of the adblocking app being used.

I’m using Adguard, but most will have element blocking as a feature.

Basically, I select “block ads on this website”, and I click on the element. A small box comes up where I can fine tune the selected element (I usually do this to get cleaner results), then I preview and confirm the setting.

I’m able to then take that filter, and use it pretty much anywhere else that I use adguard (Android phone, another computer, etc.). It’s awesome.

But like I said, most adblockers will have this feature, including the popular ublock origin. It might just be under a different name.

You can do this for any website :)